When making a telephone call over a conventional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), a caller uses a touch-tone telephone keypad to enter a telephone number typically consisting of eleven digits for a long distance call within the United States, or other numbers of digits in some foreign countries, which identify the call recipient. Using the number entered, the PSTN identifies the caller, sets up the telephone connection, manages the call and charges the call to the caller's or subscriber's account. The PSTN identifies the caller by identifying the telephone line used to make the call, which is assigned to a specific subscriber. However, in Internet telephony systems, callers typically are not identified by the line they call from, so they must supply this information to make VoIP telephone calls.
In order to supply account information before a telephone call can be made over a VoIP network, callers have been required to input a long series of digits by a procedure as for example illustrated in FIG. 1A. A conventional telephone handset is picked up to initiate a VoIP call. In step 110 the caller uses the telephone keypad or a computer keyboard to enter an access number of an Internet calling service, which could be a local number or a toll free national access number. Typically, in the U.S. this is an eleven digit telephone number such as 1-800-555-1234. Once a connection is established to the service, the caller in step 120 enters an account number of, say, eleven digits, followed in step 130 by entering a personal identification number (PIN) of, say, four digits. Finally, in step 140, the caller enters the desired recipient's eleven digit (or other length, depending on the country,) telephone number. This method of making a VoIP call from a regular telephone requires callers to enter a total of approximately thirty-seven digits.
Callers accustomed to making conventional telephone calls by entering eleven digits view entering thirty-seven digits as tedious and are discouraged from using VoIP networks to make telephone calls. Therefore, a method of reducing the number of digits that are entered when placing a VoIP telephone call is needed.
Auto dialers, as shown in FIG. 1B, have been used to address the task of repeatedly transmitting strings of digits. VoIP telephone calls have the problem that only the portion of the string corresponding to the network access number, account number and PIN number is the same for all calls through a given service provider, whereas the portion corresponding to the recipient's telephone number differs for each recipient. Although auto dialer 150 has the ability to store and transmit programmed strings of digits, it does not have the flexibility to automatically modify an existing string of VoIP logon digits by appending a different telephone number string for each call recipient. It would be inefficient to have the caller program the auto dialer with the same logon string and a different telephone number string for every new call made. Also, the storage capacity of auto dialers is finite and incrementally costly.
Furthermore, when making a VoIP telephone call it is insufficient to transmit just a string of numbers and be done. Often the caller must transmit some digits, wait for a handshake signal from the IP network, transmit the next set of digits, and so on, until a connection is established. A conventional auto dialer 150 does not have the ability to interact with a communications network in this smart fashion. Therefore, there is a need for a smart auto dialer which can automatically modify a string of digits according to a user's input, transmit that string of digits and interact with the communications network to establish communications.